Cranston Comes Alive

The 61-year-old actor gives a master class on the fine arts of paying your dues—and making the most of your later-in-life big break.

BY JESSICA PRESSLER

Oct 17, 2017

It’s just shy of 11:00 a.m., and Bryan Cranston is telling dirty jokes. “Out of Detroit, the automakers are worried the car sales are down,” he booms from the front seat of the van that rumbles over the Triborough Bridge as it takes him between the sets of two of his many projects. It’s an old comedy bit he used to do back in the early eighties. “All you have to do is name the cars after female body parts. Like, ‘The perky little Ford Nipple.’ Or . . .” Cranston’s voice goes low and radio-announcer slick. “You’ll feel the difference once you climb inside a Vulva.” The driver snorts. “The all-new Dodge Vagina,” Cranston goes on, playing to his one-man audience. “Slip into a Vagina and you’ll never wanna get out. It will drive you crazy.”

The van pulls up outside a Brooklyn soundstage and Cranston, sixty-one, hops out, his sneakers hitting the ground. He slings his backpack over his shoulder and is on the move, greeting the security guy and everyone else he passes with equal enthusiasm. “GRILLED CHEESE!” he yelps at a caterer proffering a tray of mini sandwiches. “Come on girlfriend.”

Chewing, he studies a nearby monitor, which shows two actors performing a tense scene. “He should pause a little there,” he murmurs, and he is right. After all, Cranston is an actor, best known for playing the lovable dad on Malcolm in the Middle and the not-so-lovable one on Breaking Bad. His Emmy collection is so vast it’s practically gaudy. But today he’s playing the role of producer, which, like his other parts, he has infused with a kind of paternal pride. He calls the long list of projects he’s developed with his production company, Moonshot Entertainment, his “children,” and eagerly lists them by name: There’s the con-man drama Sneaky Pete (the show whose set we are on), which is now entering its second season on Amazon. There’s the family comedy The Dangerous Book for Boys also for Amazon.

On set earlier that morning, Cranston, who has seemingly boundless reserves of energy, jovially ribbed its preteen stars. (“He’s twelve,” he said of one Bambi-eyed boy, “but he’s so immature he can play ten.”) Then there’s Electric Dreams a Black Mirror–esque series based on the short stories of Philip K. Dick, and—wait, what’s the other one? Cranston’s gingery brows furrow in consternation for a few seconds. Like any father of multiples, he gets mixed up from time to time. Oh, right: Super Mansionthe animated show about aging superheroes! “I’ve been so busy,” he says.

To be clear, Cranston isn’t complaining. Not in the way some stars three quarters his age do, whose messy topknots and ginormous Starbucks indicate just how overworked and in demand they are—lucky, of course, #blessed—but who also look like they might if someone doesn’t pump a shot of vitamin B12 into their asses immediately.

Nope. When Cranston, who has the densest Google calendar I’ve ever seen (seriously, it’s almost completely red), says he’s busy, he means he’s genuinely pleased. “Because I’ve been outside, knocking,” he said, sitting in a neat suit at the Crosby Street Hotel the day before, tapping his knuckles in a way that caused the people next to us to jump. “And now I’m inside.”

"I had to have the courage to not know what was going to happen to me."

The reference is a little on the nose, as they say in Hollywood, since it was the One Who Knocks—Walter White—who brought Cranston inside. Critics like to talk about how Breaking Bad “changed television” by, among other things, taking its central character from hero to villain over the course of five seasons. (As the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, put it, he went “from Mr. Chips to Scarface.”) The show also changed Cranston’s life, transforming him, at age fifty, from a Hey, It’s That Guy into a full-blown TV star. Now he’s launching a hell of a second, or third, or fourth act: as a producer, an author (his memoir, Life in Parts, hit the best-seller list last year), and—I can’t believe I’m just getting to this—a man on the cusp of becoming a full-blown movie star, with two major projects coming out soon. There’s Upside (March 9), in which Cranston plays a wealthy quadriplegic who’s pined over by Nicole Kidman and who forms an Unlikely Friendship with his home health aide, Kevin Hart. The film is a remake of a French blockbuster that grossed approximately a bajillion euros and left all of France in tears. But first there’s Richard Linklater’s much-anticipated Last Flag Flying (November 3), costarring Steve Carell and Laurence Fishburne. It’s one of those gritty, politically relevant ensemble pieces, and Cranston’s performance, as a caustic Vietnam vet, has Oscar prognosticators practically licking their envelopes. Even old showbiz hands can’t help but be charmed. “Here’s a guy who’s this journeyman character actor who, in the middle of life, becomes a star and is still going and continues to be extremely passionate about what he does,” says Fishburne. “It’s a rare, beautiful thing,”

Still, as Cranston points out, nothing is permanent. “Wherever my level of celebrity is, it’s great for one main reason: opportunity,” he says over lunch at the hotel. “I’m very aware that I’ve been given an opportunity to tell stories, and that I have a limited time to do that. At some point, this will wane, and that’s the way it should be. But for the time that I have it, I’m going to take advantage of it. I want to be fully in. I want to experience it all. I want to know what it feels like.”

A waitress comes by with a tray of miniature ice cream cones, and Cranston, who declined dessert, looks up, eyes twinkling. “Sure!” he says, wrapping his thumb and forefinger around a tiny cone with glee. Hey, you only live once.

As Cranston tells it, this is what later-in-life success is like: the unexpected but delightful ice cream cone at the end of a meal. After all, he achieved his goal, which was to make a living as an actor, a long time ago. That was something his parents, who met in a Hollywood acting class in the 1950s, had failed to do. His mother, Peggy, left the business early on to become a June Cleaver–style housewife, raising Cranston and his two siblings in the Los Angeles suburbs. But his father, Joe, “wanted to be a star.” Cranston says, sounding a note of doom. Joe, like Cranston, was handsome, with a strong jaw and a matinee-idol voice, and he did well enough as an actor: One year he even made enough money to buy the family a pool. But when his dream did not come to pass, the condition of the pool and his marriage suffered. The former stultified into greenish-black decay, while the latter blew up in “careening, blistering fights” that left Cranston and his siblings cowering in their rooms. Eventually Joe left for another woman, after which Peggy started drinking. What remained of the family’s Leave It to Beaver facade crumpled like a cheap set. “It was a seismic shift,” Cranston recalls. “Boom, Dad’s gone, Mother’s emotionally gone.”

"If I lose fans...so be it. I'd rather be someone who stands up for something."

Then Cranston, twelve, and his big brother were gone, too, shipped off to a small rural town at the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains to live with their grandparents, who put them to work “neck-deep in chicken shit” on a neighboring egg farm. “We were like, ‘What just happened?’ ” Cranston says. As the years passed, the shock never fully dissipated. Cranston, who back home had been popular, a good student, the star of school plays, grew introverted and started getting in trouble. He became, as one uncle dubbed him, a Sneaky Pete—a drifter, a slacker.

In high school, he followed his brother into a police-training program, mainly because it offered a six-week trip to Europe. This was, by some measures, transformative—on what would later become known as the “hooker tour,” Cranston lost his virginity to an Austrian prostitute and familiarized himself with the red-light districts in at least three European cities. But the end result was not what the police academy had in mind.

Back in the States, while waiting to take the service exam, Cranston and his brother decided to take a cross-country motorcycle trip, which lasted two years. Along the way, they picked up odd jobs—Cranston worked as a tan-oil salesman, a waiter, and a Universal Life Church minister, among other roles that suited his natural charisma. But he didn’t discover his true calling until one night during a relentless six-day rainstorm in Virginia, when he had an epiphany while reading Hedda Gabler. “I had to allow myself to get lost in order to be found,” he says of the moment he decided to become an actor. It is a testament to Bryan Cranston’s almost otherworldly sincerity, or possibly his acting skills, that words like these do not sound completely hokey coming out of his mouth. “I had to have the courage to not know what was going to happen to me, or where I was supposed to be.”

Shirt and tie by Salvatore Ferragamo; socks by Pantherella.

Marc Hom

Given his father’s fate, choosing the life of an actor was a loaded decision. Cranston says he made a promise to himself that he would never chase stardom. “Because of what happened to him, I remember I was like, ‘You know what? I think I’d be very lucky and happy if I could just set as a goal that I make a living as an actor. The rest is all gravy.’ ”

Cranston went to work, first on a loading crew, then as a production assistant, stuffing blood and guts into the title character of Alligator, a lesser Robert Forster film from 1980. Eventually, he landed commercials—though not the most desirable ones at first. (“Now you can relieve inflamed hemorrhoidal tissue with the oxygen action of Preparation H!” he suavely promised in one classic.) But Cranston’s affability, as well as his willingness to do things like talk about his inflamed ass on national television, soon made him a favorite of casting directors. He started getting roles such as “Clerk Number Two” and “Drunk Guy at a Party,” he recalls. Then came characters with first names. Finally, in 1983, he scored a character with a full name: Douglas Donovan, on the New York–based soap opera Loving. This accomplishment still ranks high on Cranston’s personal list. “I felt like I’d crossed over a threshold,” he says at lunch.

Although the door itself was still far away, the foyer, such as it was, wasn’t a bad place to be. Soap operas were in their heyday, and while “Loving was easily the worst of the bunch,” according to his then-costar John O’Hurley, whose character was married to the same woman as Cranston’s (unbeknownst to either of them, naturally), the actors were afforded a moderate level of fame. “You were always doing these celebrity things, like guest-starring on shows like Family Feud,” says O’Hurley. “It was a very seductive way to live back then.”

Loving burned through plotlines and characters so quickly that the cast referred to the soap as and two years in, Cranston was fired. “I think Douglas Donovan just disappeared,” says O’Hurley, who at that point was playing twins. As for Cranston, he kept himself afloat by doing bit parts on series including Baywatch, Falcon Crest, and Hill Street Blues. He also tried his hand at open-mic nights at the Comedy Store and the Playboy Club because, he says, it scared him. He wasn’t bad—that van driver was really chortling!—but he didn’t like the lifestyle. By then, the Sneaky Pete in him was gone thanks to his new passion, and the late nights interfered with what he calls his “get-up-and-go.” So he stopped. “There’s an adage: ‘Nothing good happens after midnight,’ and I believe it,” he says. “It’s more dangerous, with theft, with drunks, with bad drivers. I’m just not interested.”

"I relate to people who are somewhat damaged."

For a motorcycle-riding, hooker-sexing, dirty-joke-telling thespian, Cranston can come across as surprisingly square. He almost seems to take pride in it, saying that of all his characters, the one he most resembles is the father he played last year in Why Him? “A good guy,” Cranston says. “Married, has children, trying to do the right thing, can’t believe the craziness around him.” It’s this version of Cranston who answers the door at his modest house in the San Fernando Valley a week later, wearing jogging shorts and looking bemused. It’s seven in the morning, and as his wife, Robin Dearden, explains, one of the shower pans has apparently sprung a leak. “The shower pan,” Cranston repeats in wonder. “For years, it’s fine, and then all of a sudden . . .”

Dearden, a bright-eyed brunette in yoga pants, hands me a mug of coffee and ushers me into the living room, which is almost assiduously normal, decorated with family photos in frames covered in phrases like GREAT DAD. Through a window, an actual tree house is visible in the backyard. She and Cranston met as guest stars in a 1986 episode of Airwolf—he was a feather-haired kidnapper; she was his feather-haired hostage—and have been married for twenty-eight years, which they know is an eternity in Hollywood. “We actually get along amazingly well,” says Dearden, who looks much the same as she did in her Airwolf days, minus the feathered hair. She’s been acting less since they had their daughter, Taylor, and Cranston landed the role of Hal on Malcolm in the Middle . Now she is an advisor of sorts to her husband, reading his scripts and offering suggestions on his various projects. They are clearly devoted. “Robin is my partner in everything,” he wrote in his memoir. “My love.”

Coat by Versace.

Marc Hom

Having a stable family life is something that is deeply important to Cranston, in part, as he says in his book, because it allows him to “go crazy” in his work. “But also because there wasn’t stability in my family,” he says. “That really scared me, at ten, when you’re starting to think, Oh, I get it. Mom, Dad. This is my life,” he says. “And then all of a sudden that’s taken away.” This is why, he thinks, he relates to characters who are “somewhat damaged,” like Walter White, or Last Flag Flying’s Sal,who disguises his vulnerability with crass talk and bluster and blunts his feelings with alcohol. “His emotional growth was stunted, for whatever reason,” says Cranston. “And he’s in so much pain that he’s looking for as much fun as possible. In other words, he’s kind of a Sneaky Pete.

“In many ways, I think I have used my career as a therapy session of life,” Cranston continues. “It has been, I think, tremendously beneficial for me to get into roles that are sometimes disturbing, and to be able to purge my darker side into the character and have a cathartic release.”

Dearden says her husband never brings his characters home. His chaotic childhood, she points out, has had another unexpected benefit. “I think that’s why you never worry, because the worst already happened,” she says. Turning to me, she adds, “Like, he has no anxiety.”

"It's devastating. There's no moral foundation to the man."

This morning, though, Cranston admits to being a bit on edge. The night before, Donald Trump gave his speech about “many sides” being responsible for the violence in Charlottesville. Cranston was disturbed. “It’s devastating,” he says, shaking his head. “There’s no moral foundation to the man.”

During the filming of Last Flag Flying in Pittsburgh during the run-up to the presidential election, Cranston and Carell went door-to-door, canvassing for Hillary Clinton. The film is fairly political. Richard Linklater describes it as an “echo” of Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail, the 1973 anti-Vietnam road-trip flick starring a mustached Jack Nicholson. Set in the early aughts, Last Flag Flying follows three Vietnam vets who reunite to bring home the body of one of their sons, a soldier who was killed brutally and pointlessly in the Iraq War. Cranston’s character delivers some of the more pointed dialogue, especially considering the current political environment. “When your country lies to you, it changes everything,” he says at one point. “The political message of the film is that enlisted men and women are pawns to the government,” Cranston says. “Which in itself is not wrong. It’s just that you want to trust your government, and that they make moves for the right reasons.”

One thing Cranston definitely isn’t worried about is partisan blowback. “If I lose fans for my political stance, or because people don’t like the movie, so be it,” he says. “I’d rather be someone who stands up for something.” After lacing his sneakers, he gets up. It’s time to hit the trail.

Jacket, shirt, trousers, tie, and shoes by Ermenegildo Zegna Couture.

Marc Hom

Cranston and Dearden like to take early-morning hikes whenever he’s home Now the sun is peeking over the hills, and he wants to get going before it burns off the fog that covers the city like a cozy blanket. “There’s something special about early morning,” Cranston says as we walk out to the jasmine-scented streets that loop beyond their house. “The air is fresh, it’s so quiet, only a few people, no traffic. And it’s ephemeral.”

Heading up the hill, we run into a few other hikers, who greet Cranston a little more enthusiastically than one would a stranger. He’d been mildly recognizable for years pre–Breaking Bad, but the wave of craziness that came with the show was instant and overwhelming. “We kept looking at each other like, ‘Wow, what’s going on?’ ” says Dearden. “We’re being invited here and there.” It helped that the couple had people like Tom Hanks, whom Cranston has known ever since he played Buzz Aldrin in the 1998 series Earth to the Moon to guide them through this experience, and that Cranston’s temperament prevented him from falling prey to some of the temptations of celebrity, like buying a vineyard or dating Blac Chyna.

“I mean, I was fifty. So I was already formed. Like, the clay was dry.”

“Cracking, actually,” jokes Dearden.

“Yeah,” he says. “I could’ve used a little more water!”

Still, the attention was destabilizing. “There is certainly an abundance of sycophants who want to use you as a way up for themselves,” Cranston says matter-of-factly as we climb the hill. By the same token, he has served as a ladder for many people throughout his career. By the end of its run, Breaking Bad featured guest appearances by numerous Friends of Cranston, including his wife, his daughter, and Robert Forster. When Cranston played Lyndon B. Johnson on Broadway in All the Way, for which he won a Tony, he helped a friend from his early acting days get cast in a supporting role. Cranston’s partner in Moonshot, his production company, is his former agent James Degus; the director of the Sneaky Pete episode I’d seen in Brooklyn was someone he knew from a 1997 TV pilot; a Malcolm in the Middle alum was brought in for Cranston even has a project in development with John O’Hurley. “I think that’s my, not obligation, but responsibility, to sort of bring people along,” Cranston says.

His dream is to make a movie “kinda like The Grand Budapest Hotel, where all the cast and crew and producers stay in one place, and not only do we make a movie during the day but we have a familial dinner at night.”

Dearden sighs a little at this. Her husband’s only real fault is “his constant need to work,” she says affectionately. “I’m excited for him, but I miss the downtime. That’s been the hardest, because it gets lonely. But also, we’re older, so . . .”

Cranston laughs. “So loneliness can be assuaged with a good nap.”

Suit by Emporio Armani; shirt by Giorgio Armani; tie by Paul Stuart.

Marc Hom

They’re both looking forward to spending time together this fall in London, where Cranston is in the National Theatre production of Network, an adaptation of the 1976 film. (He’ll star as crazed newscaster Howard Beale, played in the movie by Peter Finch.)

Cranston agrees that his current pace is not sustainable in the long run. “I think I’ve got maybe another five or six years of what I call punching it in the face, then maybe twenty years of active involvement,” he tells me. “After that, who knows?”

“When you hit sixty, you realize, ‘Oh, we’ve now entered the final third,’ ” says Dearden as we near the top of the hill. “The final frontier is before us. And you go, ‘Okay . . .’ ”

Cranston finishes the thought. “How do you wanna live that?”

We’ve reached the summit. He looks around. “A bit overcast, really,” he says. “Isn’t it great?” Then it’s time to head down, back to work.

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